Surgery scares?

Ominous.

My mother and I had a scheduled consultation with the head surgeon at a Houstonian medispa this morning and I walked out with impending dread. In the two hours my mother spent explaining the condition of how my eyes are uneven and haggling a pricetag, the surgeon and assistant bombarded me with suggestions for a nose job and laser resurfacing, as if this were a car dealership situation where you tacked on offers to sell. 
Well, it's not like that, and my nose is FINE.
I'm going to permanently look this way for the rest of my life. I'm going to have to psychologically adjust to my physiological changes: take a look in the mirror, see the post-procedure girl and accept that it's me. This isn't a trendy shirt I can slip on and toss off with the flick of a wrist, and very few people seem to have the notion that this is momentous. (There is LITERALLY a guy making stereotypical "$5 love you long time!" jokes on my Facebook status updates regarding the consultation, and I don't think when I said "that's distasteful"--I don't think he got the message that I was referring to HIM.)

A cloud of too-perfect, overly worked-on wannabe Vietnamese singers floated in and out of the office. It made me squirm a little more in my seat. I'm not an avid fan of Barbie doll levels of plastic surgery, and this upcoming surgery compromises a few of my beliefs... yet I know this is something I've always wanted. 

Everything I feel about plastic surgery (and having children) all in one photo.Let's say their children will hate the ever-loving guts out of their parents.

So why blepharoplasty? At some point in life as an Asian (not even just an Asian-American), the question of  "double eyelid surgery" props up. It's a sort of beautifying rite of passage, where we strip a physical feature of our "Asianness" (monolids) and become knighted into a Eurocentric, white-washed society. Girls like me don't embrace their monolids, and in fact, a quick search on Google with "korean surgeries" in the queue will show that plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons has been on the rise. These people are unfathomably, mind-boggling, and dramatically changed. A strong majority of before-after photos of patients who've elected blepharoplasty are indeed, Asian. This idea of surgery for visual appeal in the ways our eyes look is embedded in the culture. Outsiders find it shocking, we call it reality.

My reasons are slightly tweaked. 

First photo: my left eye. It has a crease or what we call a "double eyelid".
Second photo: my right eye. It's a droopy monolid.
Third photo: My epithelium (where the skin attaches near the tearducts) turn my bottom lids upwards and inwards.

It's mostly corrective: I have one double eyelid, and one monolid. It's a great source of self-loathing and self-consciousness, and has been since birth. Some classmates who pointed it out back in high school made me feel hella ugly, but I've been remedying it with specialized "eyelid tape" and glue to make both my eyes appear even. I inherited these eyes from my father, but you wouldn't know because he too, went under the knife. 
(Ever wonder why I wear my eyeliner so thick? which some people have also teased me for.) It's because my eyes are shaped differently. In the mornings I jab my right eye with a eyelid tool and hope to get it right, submitting it to pain and irritation and ptosis. I kinda don't want to have to live the rest of my life buying WonderTape online and overseas because my eyes are wonky.

My tools of impermanent eyelid decimation. These aren't cheap, either.

My epithelium also has my bottom eyelashes inverted INTO MY EYE (INTO MY EYE, YOU GUYS) and it's been damaging my cornea--especially in my left eye. Eyelashes can scratch up your eyes if they're inverted, which is exactly what mine are doing to me. Some people think it's cool, I think it's bothersome. I'm surprised my vision hasn't gotten so bad that I need glasses.

This has been more of a rant than anything else, with my personal experience overshadowing my dislike for vain, cosmetic procedures (I'm still ragging on that surgeon for throwing in a need for a RHINOPLASTY because nopenopenopenope I don't need one), treating bodies like commodities, and the history of plastic surgery being so commonplace in my culture (a lot of which I edited out). Michelle Phan has a video showing how my mornings work out to a T (jabbing yourself in the eye with a tool meant for double eyelids)--she also features the same brand of tape that I use.

Unfortunately, my situation isn't curable with adhesives. It's going down tomorrow, at 11:00 AM. Two hours of surgery with a downtime of five days of puffy, blood-dried eyes and stitches. Wish me luck, because I honestly don't know how to prepare myself. *sigh*

xoxo